Azure Backup stepping in RaaS (Restore-as-a-Service) model

I do hope this blog post readers are ware Azure offering free data backup solution called “Azure Data Protection Manager (DPM)” Basically it’s same as Data Protection Manager offered via System Center suite with the exception Tape drives are not supported by AzDPM. But again who needs tape drives . Nevertheless Azure Data Protection Manager offers the solution of protecting on-premise and Azure VM’s data backup. But sad story is when it comes to restore the time and complexity. Thanks to the new RaaS method things will get dramatically change when it comes to data restoration. Some of the key benefits of this method are,

Instant recovery of files – Instantly recover files from the VM’s hosted on Azure or on-premise. Whether it’s a case of accidental file deletion or simply validating the backup, instant restore drastically reduces the time taken to recover your first file.Open and review files in the recovery volumes before restoring them – You can mount the previous backup as a snapshot and view them and decide which files you need to recover.

Even though this is in the preview level I look forward to see this on GA very soon.

1. In my Azure test VM I’ve created couple of test folders and copied few files in it.

2. Using Azure backup I’ve already taken backup of this VM

3. Now let me go ahead and delete the folder1 in the Important data folder. After that I’m showing the current volumes in this VM.

4. Now let’s get back to Azure portal to recover the data. for this I’m logging into the Azure portal within the Azure VM, this allows me to restore the files to the same VM which I’ve deleted folder in the first place. Keep an eye on the red arrow location. This is the new feature I’m highlighting today . WE can select the snapshot we want to map to the Azure VM. Once that completed we run the PS to mount the snapshot volume to the Azure VM.

5. As you can see in the last picture we manage to see the deleted data available in the mounted volume. Now we can copy them and restore to the location where we delete them accidently. Once the restore work is completed you need to stop the PS session and unmounts he volume from the Azure portal.

As you can see this is very easy and useful feature. According to Microsoft Azure Backup team this feature can be used to restore up-to 10GB of files. If you want to restore more than that it’s recommend to restore the entire VM from a snapshot. By the time I’m writing this post Azure Backup team has announced the supportability of restoring files from Linux VM’s as well. You can get more information about that from here.

PS: Same steps applies when you try to restore files for on-premise VM protected by Azure Backup service. Make sure you Azure Backup agent version is 2.0.9063.0